Methodology III: Discourse is a depending variable:
Allowing the articulation of shared fantasies

Richard Koenigsberg
  1. Political ideologies mean nothing in and of themselves. They become meaningful to the extent that they serve as "transference vehicles." Hitler's political agenda or mandate derived from a psychic source. Hitler dedicated himself to the project of re-uniting Austria and Germany because this ideology symbolized his desire to (re) unite his own body with the body of his mother.
     
  2. The Nazi dream of "unity” was rooted in a biological fantasy conceiving of the nation as a gigantic "body politic" consisting of the German people as flesh and blood or cells of this body.  Mahler defined symbiosis as "somatopsychic omnipotent fusion." The Nazis' dream was the recreation of symbiosis in the tie to Germany. Hitler imagined that his own body was bound to the "national organism" and that separation from this organism was inconceivable.  The dream of fusion was actualized in meetings and rallies where thousands of bodies massed together to create the illusion of a single body acting in unison.
     
  3. Metaphors and images in ideological language articulate the shared fantasy that is contained within the ideology. These metaphors and images are bound in consistent ways to the central symbolic objects constituting the ideology, such as “nation” and “Jew.” The recurrence of certain words, metaphors and images testify to the fact that a consistent fantasy is being projected into the ideology.
     
  4. I hypothesize that a necessary condition for the espousal of an ideology within a society is the existence of an unconscious fantasy that is shared by the members of the society. The ideology is a cultural creation or invention permitting a shared unconscious fantasy to manifest as social reality. It is through the medium of an ideology that a shared fantasy becomes part of the world. The ideology constitutes the modus operandi for the projection of a shared fantasy. “History” is the enactment of shared fantasy through the vehicle of ideology.
     
  5. REALITY IS SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED ON THE BASIS OF UNCONSCIOUS FANTASIES: the unconscious creation of culture (why we embrace war). The ideology contains the desires. The unconscious fantasies or desires can be perceived through the language of the ideology. We connect with the ideology in order to fulfill a fantasy.
     
  6. The Nazi fantasy was that of the German people as cells in a gigantic organism: The German people fused  to create one body. The idea of being bound to this larger body creates "obedience." Foucault writes about "power" as if this emanates from “up above.” But power is based on a relationship between the human being and something imagined to be “up above.” Power is created by our desire to be overpowered. This is the passive desire to fuse with an omnipotent body. We want to be “hegemonized.” We can’t resist the idea that omnipotence exists “out there.” We want to connect with the omnipotence that seems to exist out there. We can resist the body politic. We imagine that this is where the goodness resides, and thus we are captured. “I long to be close to you” (The Carpenters): to fuse with the omnipotent object. In the contemporary world, the endless quest to be part of it: “I’m in with the in crowd.”
     
  7. For an ideology or discourse to take hold within a culture, in must be connected to a wellspring of psychic energy. Discourses do not exist magically—suspended in outer space—descending upon human beings. Discourse is sustained by the energy of unconscious fantasy. Shared fantasies provide psychic energy that sustains discourse. 
  1. A discourse allows inner experience—affects and inchoate ideas—to be symbolically represented. A discourse is a cultural invention that permitting human beings within a society to share their fantasies. A discourse embodies and articulates a fantasy. Discourses exist and are perpetuated to the extent that they provide a modus operandi for the expression and articulation of shared fantasies. Shared fantasies fuel the ideology and are the reason the ideology exists.
  1. Analysis of texts reveals the fantasies that are contained within the rhetoric. Fantasies contained within leaders’ rhetoric is what moves people to act. Writings and speeches by political leaders contain “hidden narratives” that are the basis for their popularity and the political programs that they embrace, embody and promote.
  1. We are living within cultural dreams. Political ideologies are like a dream that everyone is having at once. Since everyone in a given culture is living within the same dream, therefore people don’t realize that they are dreaming (see The Matrix, the greatest work of art conveying what I mean by the psychoanalysis of cultural dreaming).
  1. Analysis of texts allows one to perceive fantasies contained within ideologies. I apply Freud’s theory of psychic determinism to another domain. The language used by the political leader within his texts is strictly determined. Political leaders use their speeches to express both their own personal fantasies and fantasies that they share in common with other people within their society. 
  1. Analysis of texts allows us to see how the psychodynamic dimension links up with the political domain. I “deconstruct” ideologies or texts by demonstrating how rhetoric is used to articulate shared fantasies. I reveal the fantasies or hidden narratives that are the source of rhetoric and ideologies that the rhetoric supports.
  1. Cultural forms both support and sustain the fantasies (the psychoanalytic point of view), and also define and promulgate the fantasies (the anthropological point of view) in the form of societal ideologies that are imagined to be “the truth.” Since each culture contains or expresses or articulates a different ideology or shared fantasy, therefore we can become conscious of the unconscious only to the extent that we recognize the extent to which our consciousness is defined by our culture’s fantasies. If one does not have the perspective of an alternative culture, it is as if one is living within a dream.